Monday 6 May 2013
Welcome To My Blog
Welcome to my blog, here you will find all of my research, planning and videos leading up to my final film, Micro drama, Swede and also Primarily Task. It has information on past previous coursework, analysis of film and film openings as well as information on British Cinema including the contrast in the two Film Production Companies Warp and Working Title.
Saturday 4 May 2013
Evaluation Question Q1 Slasher Conventions
When looking at our own film we took into account a number of different conventions we had seen in previous slasher films and put them into our opening.
Our first convention was the sound of the crows as heard in the opening of The last house on the left we felt this would link in well as the patient escaped the mental asylum as the sound of crows screeching is recognised with horror which is why it links well with our opening. As we wanted the audience to have some anticipation to what was going to happen.
Another convention linked in with sound was the rock music that we used. The music comes from Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cant Stop. Rock music was used in The Return of The Living Dead which is why we used to use this convention. It also links in with the death as the music stops as the 'scream queen' is killed.
The POV camere shot was another convention we used however this convention has not been used many times in films we have seen apart from Halloween which is where we got our shot form as our killer hides behind the bushes to give the audience a sense of view from the killer
With our final girl we also played up to Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. She believes that audiences have to view characters form the view of a heterosexual male. Our camera lingers on parts of the female body in context of a males reaction. We used this to appeal to a wider male audience.
We took our convention of the weapon from Halloween the iconic kitchen knife, because its nothing out of the un-ordinary it is just a standard kitchen knife, but it becomes a lot more scarier when it is put in to context of killing someone which is the effect we tried to achieve.
Key slasher genre conventions Conclusion
As our film categories into the slasher genre below is a Vodcast on the overview of the slasher genre. It will cover some of the key conventions.
Exposition
Like psycho provides an exposition for the audience so did we. The time and date and the setting for our film which isn't included in all slasher genre films.
Narrative enigma
Narrative enigma is very commonly used in a lot of slasher films, Halloween is a key example as a POV shot i used to hide the killers identity. Which is what we did to a certain extent as it was just the opening we hid our killer identity for a short while in the first few shots to create a sense of anticipation for the audience however we did break this slasher convention because we showed our killer.
Weapon
Weapons are undoubtedly one of the key Signifiers for a slasher film which is why we chose a knife for our weapon
Location
We felt that the location would be a key part of our opening which is why we chose our first few shots to be filmed at a mental asylum. This is because we wanted our audience to follow our preferred reading, that a patient has escaped from this asylum and is seeking his revenge. For example Hell Night which is filmed in some woods.
Scream Queen
In our film we decided a key slasher convention we had to include was a scream queen. A scream queen is a girl in the slasher films who screams a lot, she is the one who is binary opposites with the final girl. Unlike the final girl the scream queen is always signified to be a rebellious character through uses of mise en scene such as smoking. They are often portrayed to be a sexually active blonde character with revealing clothes. For our film a friend played the scream queen for us. To signify this she was blonde for starters, she wore revealing clothes and shes the one who leads her boyfriend to the bedroom.
Narrative
In most slasher film openings it goes with Todorovs theory of equilibrium, this is that the film starts with equilibrium it is all calm etc. then it gets into dis-equilibium with a murder or disruption of some sort. It then goes to new equlibrium after disequilibrium. Our film however was different and was more inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre as it starts with dis-equilbrium into equilibrium.
We also went with the slasher convention of using narrative enigma to hide the killers identity, we did this mainly by POV shots, completely inspired by Halloween as Michael Myers approaches the house, which is exactly what our character is doing.
Idents
In all of the films i have watched there is at least 1 ident at the start of the film. The ident is almost always animated or has a moving part, if not it is just plain text. The film i have seen which uses just the plain text is Halloween with dimension films this uses just a simple ident, the most simple i have seen in all the films i have watched. First of all we included idents which are common in every single film whether it falls into the slasher genre or not. Most idents are the company logo name and brand image however we decided to theme one of idents for the slasher genre itself. To do this we used a San serif font to show that the film would be a horror of some sort and in this case a slasher film.
Editing and Sound
There are many editing conventions we used in our opening. One of the main conventions we used is Laura Maulvey's Theory of the male gaze, we used editing to focus on Heather's legs and show that she is the archetype scream queen. We also used editing to show that it is a POV shot of the killer as we made it a circular view of everything so you can just see through what would be the eye. We also used shaky camera techniques to make it more realistic when walking etc. We Also signified the protagonist by this POV shot as he is stalking the house, with a shot of him in the window. In all the slashers i observed this, The slashers signify the protagonist by them stalking the Victim using things like POV shots.
Another editing technique we used is cross cutting, from the killer to the Dr at the start of our opening, this created a lot of tension. The panic editing makes the viewer feel more uneasy. this is used in all the slashers i observed. The classic example of this is the psycho shower scene when the did numerous shots within a very short space of time to create more panic.
We used continuity editing to make the opening much more flowing by using traditional techniques like the 180 degree role and match on action.
In the titles of Halloween it introduces two of the main characters, with their name in big letter the 'in'. this is because the names of these two are either recognized or are main parts in the film. As me and Curtis Tiplady are both recognized names in our media society from doing the swede and the micro-drama, we are going to do the same as this
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| Crow sounds |
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| Rock Music |
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| POV shot |
The POV camere shot was another convention we used however this convention has not been used many times in films we have seen apart from Halloween which is where we got our shot form as our killer hides behind the bushes to give the audience a sense of view from the killer
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| False Scare |
The convention of a false scare is not just apparent in most slasher films but in almost any horror film as well. The false scare brings up the audiences sense of anticipation to then relieve them to make the real scare of a much more significance to the audience.
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| Male Gaze Theory |
The final girl was a new addition to our film opening, the convention of a scream queen is in a lot of slasher movies. We took our convention fromNightmare On Elm Street the scream queen was Heather Langenkamp who played Nancy. To anchor our final girl we used revealing clothes and made it apparent to our audience that she was sexually active.
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| Scream Queen |
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| Weapon |
We took our convention of the weapon from Halloween the iconic kitchen knife, because its nothing out of the un-ordinary it is just a standard kitchen knife, but it becomes a lot more scarier when it is put in to context of killing someone which is the effect we tried to achieve.
Key slasher genre conventions Conclusion
As our film categories into the slasher genre below is a Vodcast on the overview of the slasher genre. It will cover some of the key conventions.
Exposition
Like psycho provides an exposition for the audience so did we. The time and date and the setting for our film which isn't included in all slasher genre films.
Narrative enigma
Narrative enigma is very commonly used in a lot of slasher films, Halloween is a key example as a POV shot i used to hide the killers identity. Which is what we did to a certain extent as it was just the opening we hid our killer identity for a short while in the first few shots to create a sense of anticipation for the audience however we did break this slasher convention because we showed our killer.
Weapon
Weapons are undoubtedly one of the key Signifiers for a slasher film which is why we chose a knife for our weapon
Location
We felt that the location would be a key part of our opening which is why we chose our first few shots to be filmed at a mental asylum. This is because we wanted our audience to follow our preferred reading, that a patient has escaped from this asylum and is seeking his revenge. For example Hell Night which is filmed in some woods.
Scream Queen
In our film we decided a key slasher convention we had to include was a scream queen. A scream queen is a girl in the slasher films who screams a lot, she is the one who is binary opposites with the final girl. Unlike the final girl the scream queen is always signified to be a rebellious character through uses of mise en scene such as smoking. They are often portrayed to be a sexually active blonde character with revealing clothes. For our film a friend played the scream queen for us. To signify this she was blonde for starters, she wore revealing clothes and shes the one who leads her boyfriend to the bedroom.
Narrative
In most slasher film openings it goes with Todorovs theory of equilibrium, this is that the film starts with equilibrium it is all calm etc. then it gets into dis-equilibium with a murder or disruption of some sort. It then goes to new equlibrium after disequilibrium. Our film however was different and was more inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre as it starts with dis-equilbrium into equilibrium.
We also went with the slasher convention of using narrative enigma to hide the killers identity, we did this mainly by POV shots, completely inspired by Halloween as Michael Myers approaches the house, which is exactly what our character is doing.
Idents
In all of the films i have watched there is at least 1 ident at the start of the film. The ident is almost always animated or has a moving part, if not it is just plain text. The film i have seen which uses just the plain text is Halloween with dimension films this uses just a simple ident, the most simple i have seen in all the films i have watched. First of all we included idents which are common in every single film whether it falls into the slasher genre or not. Most idents are the company logo name and brand image however we decided to theme one of idents for the slasher genre itself. To do this we used a San serif font to show that the film would be a horror of some sort and in this case a slasher film.Editing and Sound
There are many editing conventions we used in our opening. One of the main conventions we used is Laura Maulvey's Theory of the male gaze, we used editing to focus on Heather's legs and show that she is the archetype scream queen. We also used editing to show that it is a POV shot of the killer as we made it a circular view of everything so you can just see through what would be the eye. We also used shaky camera techniques to make it more realistic when walking etc. We Also signified the protagonist by this POV shot as he is stalking the house, with a shot of him in the window. In all the slashers i observed this, The slashers signify the protagonist by them stalking the Victim using things like POV shots. Another editing technique we used is cross cutting, from the killer to the Dr at the start of our opening, this created a lot of tension. The panic editing makes the viewer feel more uneasy. this is used in all the slashers i observed. The classic example of this is the psycho shower scene when the did numerous shots within a very short space of time to create more panic.
We used continuity editing to make the opening much more flowing by using traditional techniques like the 180 degree role and match on action.
In our film, at the beginning we provide exposition, as our film is inspired largely by Halloween we felt that we should take inspiration from the film. Therefore we provided the location at the start of our film opening saying 'High Royds' this was to introduce the film and to give the audience a sense of where the location is.
We then took another inspiration from Halloween and provided another bit of exposition with providing the times/dates of when the scenes are. This also gives the viewer a sense of time and information. As the film is not continuous exposition is needed for the viewer.
Here is the titles of the film SAW it is a sequence of titles after the short introduction, just like our film. it has the effect of running blood down the screen then has the letters in blood like effect, this is the kind of inspiration that gave us to do our titles and what our titles are going to look like.
Evaluation Question Q2 Representations
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Camera man/Director: George Holmes, Jake Wilson
Age
All our actors/actresses are teenagers aged from 16 - 17. However we wanted the audience to feel like the Dr and his girlfriend were older in their late 20's, this was to appeal to a larger audience yet still appeal to the older audience.
Location
All of our characters are from north of England which isn't popular and very weird for Americans as most British films are set down south of England Therefore our audience may not be in america. However The slasher genre is a very unique genre as people don't seem to care as much about what country/county it is set in they just like the gore and the thrill they seem to get from watching it! So that's why were not overly bothered about where the film was set as long as the locations were good, we felt it could appeal to any audience. Never- the-less if a big budget was given to us, america or southern England would probably be where we chose as more people recognize these actors and scenic locations.
Characters
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| Michael Myers |
Peter is a mental asylum patient who has escaped from the Asylum in which the doctor works. He then comes back to kill his doctor and his wife in his own home. Peter wears a lab coat stolen from the asylum and wears this throughout our opening for the effect and it looks good. influenced by the slasher film Halloween and the patient and the main killer in the film Michael Myers who has also escaped from a mental asylum.
Dr Loomis
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| Dr Loomis |
Heather is the Scream queen in our film. Like your stereotypical scream queen she wore very little clothes, also revealing clothes, shes blonde and most importantly in our film opening she is sexually active as there is a sex scene in our opening to show this. We had a scene in the opening in which the scream queen gets killed, this was very much inspired by psycho as the same blonde scream gets killed in the bathroom. Our character heather was very much inspired by the psycho scream queen as she is blonde and sexually active. The bathroom being even more so.
Characters in our Opening
Curtis - 'Peter'
Reasons for:
- Young
- Good actor for an important role
This character kills the scream queen and the main character, we used narrative enigma to keep his identity hidden until he kills his first victim. He is an escaped patient form a mental asylum seeking revenge on his 'corrupt' doctor.
Curtis represented Michael Myers from Halloween not because of appearance but because of his weapon. However, my costume didn't follow the convention of Michael Myers as i wore a white lab coat.This is the killer running from the Asylum. The killers costume, is inspired by the patients escape to anchor that the character is a patient. He is wearing the Dr's lab coat and was the reason he was able to escape by disguise. He wears this lab coat throughout the opening.
Jake - Dr. Cruger
Reasons for:
- Looks like a doctor
- Reasonable actor for important role
- looks smart
This is the main character and is killed last by the killer. He is in a relationship with our scream queen his job role is that he works at the hospital where the killer escaped from.
Jake was the victim in our film opening, which is typical of representations. Also he was playing the role of the Dr because he looked the most appropriate out of him and Curt. He dresses reasonably smart like a Dr and has a nice house, which signifies a Dr's high wage pay. On the right is a typical character who dies after the girl.
Heather- Dr's Wife (scream queen)
- Blonde
- Takes drama for an AS level
This character is the doctors girlfriend, she plays the scream queen so she is killed first.
Heather represented Marion Crane from Psycho because she was the scream queen for our film.Here we have the bottom half of what our scream queen was wearing, we asked her to wear shorts as this shows a lot of skin especially with the top she was wearing as well. This was used as it is very stereotypical of the scream queen archetype to be blonde and wear revealing clothes.
Heather Represented the stereotypical scream queen, which is just like the archetype Janet Leigh off of the slasher psycho.
Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.
Factors which influenced our representations:
- Our primary target audience
As 15 - 24 is our target audience, this influenced our representations, we used an all teen cast and used slasher conventions such as the scream queen.
- Our secondary target audience
We have many intertextual links in our film which link to much older films that our primary target audience will be unaware of.
- Our BBFC rating
This influenced our representations because we obviously weren't going to include any representations which would exceed our rating, if so our rating would have to be raised.
- Typical slasher films
Some of our representations come from slasher films as we used similar conventions to the ones we had seen in previous slasher films.
Below is a video of us talking about the Key Points of Narrative Representations.
Below is a video of us talking about the Key Points of Narrative Representations.
Evaluation Question Q3 Distributor
Distributer (Definition)
(This was taken from Wikipedia)"The distribution of a film (or movie) is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a film distributor. This task may be accomplished in a variety of ways; for example, with a theatrical release, a home entertainment release (in which the movie is made available on DVD-video or Blu-ray Disc) or a television program for broadcast syndication and may include digital distribution"
Five Useful Hyperlinks
- http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/distribution/distribution1.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distribution
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distributor
- http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/distribution/distribution7.html
- http://www.launchingfilms.com/
Distributors are companies whose job it is to make sure media products (such as films, music and other commercial items) get a wide release and are available to buy. Their job is in advertising and persuading cinemas that their film should be shown.With our film being created on zero budget (also known as Indie) we would need to find a distribution company that wont be too expensive, so this rules out any big film companies for example Universal Pictures.
Taking the films i have analysed into account we have evidence that their is still a target audience for film of a slasher or a sub-genre of horror therefore we believe our film could fit into the market and be successful.
We could choose Warp Films as they are a UK based company and produce low budget films which are also very successful. Donkey Punch and Dead Man's Shoes are good examples of what Warp has produced, very low budget (compared to the Big 6) yet they can still make a good profit. However our film has a budget even much lower than this small indie company; therefore it does seem a bit too far away for us. Even with a budget of less than £50 there are still examples of films getting into cinemas with Colin; a £45 film which made it to the big screen, so it is a possibility this could happen to ours.
After research on the internet and from my own knowledge we found out that the best choice for a distribution company would be Optimum Releasing, giving the fact that we have no budget to work with. Optimum Releasing is a fairly low budget British Distributor company which is ideal for our film and would fit perfectly into this company. They release over 200 films a year and are one of the most prominent distributors in the UK independent film and world cinema market.
The genre for our film is Slasher, Title Name (Unknown). Our film is a very low budget indie film and there are no headline actors involved. However, the film does mirror some of the main slasher conventions which we have researched previously. To mention an example we plan to use a san seriff font for our title which is common in many slasher films such asScream and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Our film will be similar to the film MadHouse.
Top Ten film distributors in the UK (2012)
| 1 | Skyfall | Sony | 101.0 |
| 2 | The Dark Knight Rises | Warner Bros | 56.3 |
| 3 | Marvel's Avengers Assemble | Walt Disney | 51.9 |
| 4 | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | Warner Bros | 40.8 |
| 5 | The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 | EOne Films | 35.5 |
| 6 | Ted | Universal | 30.3 |
| 7 | Ice Age: Continental Drift | 20th Century Fox | 30.1 |
| 8 | The Amazing Spider-Man | Sony | 25.9 |
| 9 | Prometheus | 20th Century Fox | 24.7 |
| 10 | The Hunger Games | Lionsgate | 23.8 |
- Sony more than doubled its 2011 share of 7.35% with an enormous 17.9% share in 2012, with 'Skyfall' accounting for half its total take.
- 20th Century Fox came in a close second with 39 titles hauling £191.2m for a 16.3% market share.
- Last year's number one, Warner Bros, fell to third with £147m, a 12.5% market share. £56.3m of this total was brought in by 'The Dark Knight Rises'.
- Overall, the UK box office grossed £1.172b in 2012, narrowly ahead of 2011’s £1.130b total.
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| Skyfall Cover |
Budget
$200m
Gross (Worldwide)
$981m
Distributors
- Columbia Pictures (2012) (USA) (theatrical)
- Sony Pictures International (2012) (UK) (theatrical)
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| The Hobbit Cover |
Budget
$180m
Gross (Worldwide)
$600m
Distributors
- Warner Bros. Entertainment (2012) (UK) (theatrical)
- Warner Bros. Pictures (2012) (USA) (theatrical)
Friday the 13th (1980, Sean S. Cunningham)
Budget
$550,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend
Gross
$39,754,601 (USA)
AUD 2,202,000 (Australia)
$853,857 (Germany)
SEK 1,328,976 (Sweden)
Weekend Gross
Distributors
Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)
Budget
$19,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend
Gross
Distributers
- 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (2009) (UK)
- Orion Pictures Corporation (1991) (USA)
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| Last House On The Left Facebook Group |
All distributors use marketing tools which is what we may plan to do for our film. These techniques are used to promote a film. These can consist of posters, websites, social networking and trailers to name a few.
Examples:
Examples:
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Skyfall Website |
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| Scream Cover |
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| Texas Chainsaw Massacre Cover |
There seems to be repetition with all of the slasher genre posters, they mainly consist of dark colours and titles using a san serif font, this provides an exposition to the audience that the film they are looking at is going to be a horror of some sort for example if you compared the Skyfall cover with the Scream cover, the exposition from both would provide the genre signifier.
The distributers above would not realistically distribute our film, therefore i am going to look at more low budget
distributers.
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| Eden Lake Poste |
Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008)
Gross:
$5,824 (USA) (2 November 2008)
Production Co:
Distributers:
- Optimum Releasing (2008) (UK) (theatrical)
- Weinstein Company, The (2008) (USA) (theatrical)
Budget:
$700k (estimated)
Production Companies:
EM Media, Film4, Madman Entertainment
Realistically i feel that optimum releasing (Studio Canal) would be the right distributors for our film because our budget is very narrow and they have distributed relatively low budget films before.
The estimated budget for our film
Our film is a low budget indie film so it is impossible to have a well known distributer to fund our project. However, our budget would be extremely low anyway. We have no such thing as providing an actors salary, funding large equipment ect.
The things we are planning to include that will need funding consist of:
Distributers:
- Optimum Releasing (2008) (UK) (theatrical)
- Magnet Releasing (2009) (USA) (theatrical)
Realistically i feel that optimum releasing (Studio Canal) would be the right distributors for our film because our budget is very narrow and they have distributed relatively low budget films before.
The estimated budget for our film
Our film is a low budget indie film so it is impossible to have a well known distributer to fund our project. However, our budget would be extremely low anyway. We have no such thing as providing an actors salary, funding large equipment ect.
The things we are planning to include that will need funding consist of:
- Laboratory Coat (1)
- Fake blood
- An ID
So in total our film will cost under £10 to be realistic therefore our film is a really low budget film
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| Our film poster |
Almost every film has a film poster which is why we chose to create our own. We anchored the slasher genre through our colour scheme with the red, white and black we also used a san serif font which is specific to our slasher genre.
Our trailer, again another marketing technique that all films use - not just specific to the slasher genre. We chose to make a teaser trailer to give our target audience a sense of anticipation for our full length film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Top Ten UK Film Distributors 2012
1. Sony: $336.4m (£209.9m) 17.9%
2. 20th Century Fox: $306.5m (£191.2m) 16.3%
3. Warner Bros: $235.5m (£147m) 12.5%
4. Universal: $219.3m (£136.8m) 11%
5. Walt Disney: $197.4m (£123.2m) 10.5%
6. eOne: $129.5m (£80.8m) 6.9%
7. Paramount: $125.8m (£78.5m) 6.7%
8. Lionsgate: $109.3m (£68.2m) 5.8%
9. Momentum: $82.1m (£51.2m) 4.3%
10. Entertainment Film Distributors: $59m (£36.8m) 3.1%
Below is a Vodcast or Our We Creating British Cinema. This links into the low budget film we have created which links into Warp as they create low budget films as they are an Indie Company who can not find fundings for films such as the "Big 6" do.
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